Tuesday, July 8, 2008

While wandering around Brussels last week, I couldn't help but think about a European wedding. The city gardens are a mix of the wild English type and manicured French type, the streets are crowded with tall, ornate rowhomes, and the whole city is so beautiful and quintessentially ... European. Gorgeous. If only there were money to fly everyone to Belgium. I'd have a ceremony with lots of French words thrown in, everyone would drink Trappist and lambic beers (mmmmm, beer), and we would dine on mussels and frites. Sounds good, non?

Here's some Belgian inspiration for you:

These are MASSIVE white hydrangeas growing outside the Eglise Notre Dame du Sablon (Our Lady of Sablon Church), which is at the end of the street where my parents live. I'm not normally one for hydrangeas, but these were so huge and luscious that I couldn't help but think of wedding bouquets when I saw them.

A Bruxelloise wedding dress boutique. We couldn't decide if the red dress was better suited for bridesmaids or a bride.

In case you were wondering what "wedding registry" is in French, it's "listes de mariage." This store on the Grand Sablon was so cute, kind of like an Anthropologie for household goods.

This store, also on the Grand Sablon, was chock full of adorable dishes with bright, bold, beautiful patterns. It made me contemplate registering for china, for sure. And I now have an urge to have multiple pie plates so I can display them on their sides, as in the picture above.

We aren't having a church wedding, but if I had access to churches that look like this, I might reconsider. (Clockwise from top left: the back of Notre Dame du Sablon, Cathedrale des Saints Michel et Gudule, unknown church on Rue Royale)

This is much more my style. The wedding party could walk up the Grand Sablon (top left) and bypass Notre Dame du Sablon at the end for the Parc d'Egmont behind it (top right). Egmont happens to be my favorite Beethoven overture, as luck would have it. Or how about having the wedding in Parc de Bruxelles, right across from the Royal Palace (middle left) or in the very French-looking botanical gardens (bottom left)? Of course, the most Bruxelloise of all would be the Grand Place, which is by far the most beautiful square I've ever seen (middle and bottom right).

The Basics

We're getting married in Louisville, Kentucky, on May 24, 2009. Both the ceremony and reception will be at Glassworks; the ceremony will be up on the roof, and the reception will be inside on the second floor. I'm finishing medical school and applying to residency, and my husband-to-be is a journalist working in New Jersey, where we hope to settle after I graduate, two weeks before the wedding! We're on a tight budget, and even if we weren't, I'm a bargain shopper at heart, so we're finding ways to throw a champagne party on a happy hour sparkling wine budget.